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Impromptu lunch time post.

So my last post about skeleton ended at the end of the first session. We had lunch at a diner (I just had soup, since I packed a thousand sandwiches) and then headed to Rob’s cabin. I studied for a while since I had a chemistry midterm on Monday morning. Was a bit stressed out about that.

After study time the boys bought food for dinner (I had another sandwich) and wine and they cooked and we drank and ate. It was fun! We also played cribbage. And laughed a lot.

It is kinda funny that I was hanging out with these two strangers basically but they were really friendly and we got along well. I’m glad it was so fun, it could have been an awkward weekend.

I woke up on Sunday morning with very very sore thighs. I think it must have been from lifting the sled. The sled weighs about 60 lbs and the way I was picking it up was basically doing squats with the 60 lbs. My body is sooo not used to doing that kind of exercise. The boys had sore necks, but mine was ok.

Noon: time for session number 2!!

In the truck going up to the top. We are all laughing because Rob got into the truck without his sled and then had to jump out and get the driver to stop. It was funny at the time.

This is my favourite picture! Thanks to Rob for taking all the action shots with his nice camera. They are so cool!

Coming out of a corner.

At the end there is an uphill bit to slow down. Once you’ve gotten as high as you’re going to go the track workers jump in and stop your sled from sliding back. Then you climb over the edge and they pass it to you and you carry it back to the truck.

Second day I had a top speed of 98.1 km/h! Sam improved a lot the second day and beat me by 0.1 km/h, dang. I did have two runs over 98 km/h though and I am very pleased with that.

I really wish I could go more. The coach emailed us and said we could come back for more sessions this weekend but I simply cannot afford the money or the time. Sigh. It’s a little sucky that we probably will not really improve because we all can’t go very often. We probably will not be able to move up to the higher starting point this year. I feel like if I actually was able to go a lot I could actually get good. I really like skeleton and wish I could pursue it.

It is totally totally awesome though that we get this opportunity at all though! When the next winter Olympics roll around we’ll all be like ‘oh yeah, I’VE DONE THAT!’. Pretty cool.

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whistler sliding centre

Like I said before, my long weekend was AWESOME. Originally I was only planning on sliding on Saturday, but (1) I couldn’t find a ride home and (2) a guy in the club (that Rosemarie is already friends with) said we could stay at his cabin at Whistler for free, so I ended up staying for the Sunday session as well. That meant I had to do MEGA HOMEWORK all day Friday. Worth it.

super excited

SKELETON WAS SUPER AWESOME.

In the truck going up for our first run!

We all met up with our coach (he is from Latvia) and he picked out sleds for us and we got helmets. We changed into our tightest clothes and then eagerly awaited instructions. None came. We all get in the truck and get a ride to the Maple Leaf start (at curve 11 out of 16) and eagerly await instruction. Still nothing. Time for the first run. He tells us “Just go! Do nothing! It steers itself!” Okeedoke.

Our coach + launching board thing + Rob going around the first corner

Sam goes down first and thirty seconds later we hear his speed. NINETY ONE KM/H!!! Whoa that was way faster than I expected. Anyway quick quick quick we get lined up as soon as the person before leaves and next thing I know I’m lying on my stomach about to get pushed down the ice slide.

EEEEE IT WAS FUN! So fast! G FORCES! AGAIN AGAIN AGAIN!

We got to do 5 runs each the first day, and my top speed was 95.4 km/h. I was the speediest in our group hehe (not counting the club girl who has been doing it for a year now).

The way to succeed seems to be just being relaxed, focused, with your shoulders down and your face as close to the ice as you can (my chin guard scraped the ice a few times). The bottom straightaway was the hardest part, because once you start going crooked you kind of ricochet off the sides worse and worse each time. A little painful.

bounce

Fun fun fun. I’ve got more pictures but it’s time for relaxation time before trying to sleep. This is a tough week. Part II to come soon.

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Today was much better than yesterday. Yesterday we got back our microbiology midterms. The whole class did pretty poorly. I passed, but not by much. Pass is 60% in our program. Today I wrote another anatomy and physiology midterm. She was nice to us!! It was filled with “choose 1 of these 2 questions to answer”, or “choose 4 of these 6”. Sweeeet. I studied a lot for it, and I think I did well.

Last night was very quiet around the Jorna household. Scott was working on his math and I was studying. He’s writing his math test right now.

I went to Metrotown after school today to look for track shoes. I need shoes with metal spikes on them for skeleton this weekend. No one had any! After a bunch of telephoning I think I tracked some down (pun intended). They cost more than I thought though. :( I guess track & field equipment isn’t huge in the winter.

from euronuclear.org

I am really liking nuclear medicine more and more. Sometimes I think it’s totally inefficient and stupid to have to study nuclear medicine before studying MRI, but really I love the whole diagnostic imaging field. And nuclear medicine is pretty awesome. I mean, using specific radioactive drugs to label active areas of the body is pretty neat. In the end it will probably be useful to have two specialties anyway because I think all the technologies are converging into one piece of equipment. Ideally I would get nuc med + MRI + CT + PET.

By the way that kid is growing. All those dark black bits are bone cells dividing in the growth plates.

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I water marbled my nails last weekend during a break from schoolwork. I did rainbow colours this time and am quite pleased with how they turned out. I kinda need a brighter green though, I think.

I won’t be buying any though because I officially signed up for skeleton club. Scott and I discussed it a lot and decided that this is a pretty neat opportunity that may not come up again and in the long run what difference is a few hundred dollars going to make. In ten years I would regret not doing it more than regret spending the money, I think. Anyway so now I am on ultra-budget.

Of possible interest: My water marbling tutorial.

The first skeleton trip is next next weekend. :D I am iksidid.

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Extreme homework weekend!

Yesterday I sat at my desk for like ten hours. I listened to the entire Triple J Hottest 100 from 2010 playlist which is nearly seven hours long! And then I still did more work after that. And today I’ve spent all morning working on a paper and I still want to start my anatomy midterm notes. I’m hoping that if I do all this stuff now I will have a relatively easy week.

Paper Draft1 is now complete and printed out for proofreading! Woot.

Also banana muffins are in the oven.

Our freezer was getting a little full of frozen bananas so I decided to make up a batch of mom’s choc chip banana bread (in muffin format). Really I might as well stop trying to bring bananas to school because they get SO smashed before I am ready to eat them, so I end up bringing them home and putting them in the freezer.

I really need a banana case.

I saw some at the Granville Market (I think) but they were hard plastic in only one shape, so if your banana doesn’t fit you are out of luck. In my mind I have invented a banana case made of flexible but sturdy tubing (maybe corrugated bendable tubing?) that you can slip over any banana.

New plan: drop out of school and manufacture banana cases while training up for the 2018 Olympics. Yes?